


now that he's an imposter

by learnthemusic



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied Relationships, imposter syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:49:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1554200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/learnthemusic/pseuds/learnthemusic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry never understands it, how he went from being a scrawny, 16-year-old boy with a good voice to a guy with maybe a few too many tattoos and a band full of the most amazing lads he’s ever known.</p>
<p>It doesn’t feel like his life. It happened overnight when he wasn’t ready for it and now he’s got nowhere else to go and he doesn’t deserve the attention he gets or the free passes he’s granted when he makes the wrong move.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now that he's an imposter

**Author's Note:**

> Goodness, I don't know what this is. I never meant to do anything more than lurk in this fandom but I don't think I've got a choice, not with the WWAT starting. So here's my first attempt. It's been sitting on my computer for almost two months, so I guess now is the time. 
> 
> Intense imposter syndrome crap that I applied to Harry. This is my head canon for him, I guess. If you squint, you can find Larry.
> 
> And if anyone by any chance wants to be a beta/brit-picker for me, I'd love you to the moon and back. I need someone to hold my hand as I write an AU.

Sometimes it just all seems too much. Just the whole deal. The lights. The people. The posters and their screaming owners and the moms in the crowd who have plugs stuffed in all the way to their ear drums. It’s the Twitter questions they take and the handles some of their fans have. HarryLover1. Larry4eva. 1DonmyD, surprisingly enough.

The thing is none of it ever feels like it’s real. And Harry knows — oh, does he ever know — that when his whole life starts to revolve around a single group, a single moment, a single stroke of luck, he is the first one to stand up and pinch himself and make sure it’s not all in his imagination. That he won’t just wake up back in his old bed, the one that isn’t adorned with queen-sized pillows and 1000 count sheets, with only the phantom memory of a very eerily real dream, the wisps of it slipping away with every second that passes.

But it doesn’t mean he never feels too small for the stage he’s on or arena he’s in. He never understands it, how he went from being a scrawny, 16-year-old boy with a good voice to a guy with maybe a few too many tattoos and a band full of the most amazing lads he’s ever known.

It doesn’t feel like his life. It happened overnight when he wasn’t ready for it and now he’s got nowhere else to go and he doesn’t deserve the attention he gets or the free passes he’s granted when he makes the wrong move. He doesn’t deserve to be under the microscope of millions of people around the world who will never actually get to know him but pretend they do. He hardly even knows himself, so he’s not even sure where their truths are coming from. But if they’ve got some clue that he doesn’t, he’s at the point in his life — which is so short it feels long — where he’ll take anyone’s advice on getting there.

He never meant to set out for this kind of game. But now he’s forced to take it and run with it and hope he doesn’t screw it up without even having a clue of how to handle it. And, sure, he’s got the boys and he’s got his “people” and his posh new life that he doesn’t deserve — yet it just doesn’t feel like much. It feels like he’s stepped in for someone else, some other Harry Styles that wanted to be in the spotlight, like he got the short end of the stick.

He won’t let anyone see it. Not Zayn or Niall or Liam and especially not Louis. He’s been doing a good job of it for four years, so what’s four more? 

But he can’t promise he can keep it up forever. Not when he doesn’t feel right. Not when he doesn’t like the person people see, the person people think he’s become. The person he’s turned into without ever meaning to.

It might be too late. For all he knows, he’ll always be Harry Styles of One Direction and nothing more.

But, oh, how he wishes he could just be that scrawny 16-year-old again and do it all differently. Just go back to being plain Harry Styles, the boy with the silly scarves and the tiny arms and the feet too big for his body. Maybe he’d still be working at the bakery. Maybe he’d still be getting picked on at school. Maybe he’d still be figuring out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. At least then none of this would seem forced, like it wasn’t worth his effort.

And that’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate his chances — he does. He would thank Simon for it every day if he could. He just always feels wrong in this fast-paced world. Like he’s talking through a mouth full of cotton and no one cares enough to really listen to him. Which might sound like bullshit because constant, unrelenting attention is paid to him and it’s part of his job description, but it doesn’t make it any less true. He can’t for the life of him remember a time he was portrayed accurately by somebody else. He definitely can’t remember the last time he was taken seriously. 

So if he could go back, he would. Maybe he could have met the lads in some other way. Fate has a funny way of working, if everything the movies have ever told him holds any kind of truth. Maybe he’d have met Niall at a grocer’s, Liam at some Olympic trials, Zayn at uni, Louis at a theatre. And he’d have been the person he’d always thought he would be — just another face in the crowd. It wouldn’t have been the most exciting life but it would have been fine. Harry likes fine. 

For now, he’ll have to deal with feeling like he’s taken over someone else’s life. He’ll learn to grit his teeth and turn down his head and remember that what everyone else sees isn’t what he really is. That’s the biggest challenge in this marathon he signed himself up for, after all. And he’ll just have to learn to be fine with that too.


End file.
